191–200 of 251 posts
Yes this will doom us if it is not taken care of but I expect the American people will get smart and elect congressional leaders that will care of the growing national debt before we default. 9.8% of all of our government's revenues (tax dollars) are wasted on paying interest on the $22 trillion dollars of national debt(1)(2). 1) https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55342 2) https://www.usdebtclock.org/
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There were budget surpluses from 1998 through 2001. One thing you aren't accounting for is tax receipts going up because the economy grows. It's usually the case that spending goes up at the same time, but it doesn't have to go up.
> It's usually the case that spending goes up at the same time, but it doesn't have to go up. I just know I read a lot of headlines about how government programs are underfunded. I feel like the base of a lot of Democratic candidate campaigns is about wanting to spend more money for people who need it (impoverished people, etc.)
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Social Security funds aren't allowed to be invested in the stock market, and are held in the form of US Treasuries [0]. There was talk of changing that under Bush 44, but his reform plans never gained any serious traction. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-...
> Social Security funds aren't allowed to be invested in the stock market I know, but based on my calculations above, don't you agree that the end user (citizens) are not getting the best bang for their buck?
Social Security doesn't exist to maximize returns, it exists to protect the elderly from extreme poverty once they are no longer able to work. Because of that, the funds are invested in a very risk averse manner.
I'd certainly be open to the idea of a US sovereign wealth fund in some sense, but I don't think privatization or anything else where individuals are making decisions about their own Social Security account is a good idea, since we'll have to create another Social Security-like program to support the people who invested poorly and are unable to support themselves.
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What do Republicans advertise they are going to spend money on? I'm only familiar with Democrats calling for free health care, free college, universal basic income, etc.
War and enriching military contractors, creating the TSA, subsidies to businesses that don't need them, etc. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FiW5I95R5xg/hqdefault.jpg
So it seems like we have the choice of voting for left-wing politicians who run on increasing spending on new forms of entitlements, and spending will increase precipitously - or voting for right-wing politicians who run on not spending like the neocons do, then just do it anyway, and spending will increase precipitously.
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I don't understand why US having military presence around the globe tilts the free markets in their favour. Realistically, no military outside of perhaps Russian could stand up against the US but I don't think US are outright forcing trade agreements at a gun point, or am I wrong?
Sometimes you can just ask someone what their motivations are and they simply tell you: Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the USA https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-Nation... (11 pages, easy read) First page: "Failure to meet our defense objectives will result in decreasing U.S. global influence, eroding cohesion among allies and partners, and reduced access to markets that will cont…
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The problem is, state debt is not like personal or corparate debt. If you cut your spending to pay of a loan, it is usually not a problem. If the state cut its spending to pay back a loan, it means people have to spent more money on another spot to make up for the budget cuts. We see this currently in Germany, the German government is proud of their budget but at the same time the infrastructure is crumbling, trains…
> The ideology to have little or no state debt is hurting the economy and will do so in the future. Ideology can be pretty dangerous. This seems like your main point. Back up, though: > [...] state debt is not like personal or corparate debt. If you cut your spending to pay of a loan, it is usually not a problem. How is it less of a problem for a person, or for a corporation, than for a government, to have to reduce…
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What do Republicans advertise they are going to spend money on? I'm only familiar with Democrats calling for free health care, free college, universal basic income, etc.
The military and homeland security. Also: A half reasonable single-payer health care system should save a lot of money over-all. The fiscal conservatives should be all over that one.
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The problem is, state debt is not like personal or corparate debt. If you cut your spending to pay of a loan, it is usually not a problem. If the state cut its spending to pay back a loan, it means people have to spent more money on another spot to make up for the budget cuts. We see this currently in Germany, the German government is proud of their budget but at the same time the infrastructure is crumbling, trains…
> The ideology to have little or no state debt is hurting the economy and will do so in the future. Ideology can be pretty dangerous. This seems like your main point. Back up, though: > [...] state debt is not like personal or corparate debt. If you cut your spending to pay of a loan, it is usually not a problem. How is it less of a problem for a person, or for a corporation, than for a government, to have to reduce…
The difference is actually very simple. Persons and corporations are not closed systems. If you safe money, the impact is very small. Even when a big corporation safes money it doesn't really matter. But the state is huge and spends a lot of money. And many companies depend on state contracts.
I give you a simple example. The German state is subsidising public transport, if the state cuts theses costs, the company providing this service has only a few choices, such as cutting service or increasing prices. These will leads the consumer to have higher costs. If the company cuts lay off people to compensate, those will lose their income and the state must even pay them unemployment benefits.
So the state budget is not really a question if something is be paid but rather by whom and at what point. It is essentially a closed system.
P.S. Very export depended countries can essentially export this partially to other countries. There is this argument that Germany did that with Greece. While Germany consolidated its budget, the debt of Greece increased.
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I don't understand why US having military presence around the globe tilts the free markets in their favour. Realistically, no military outside of perhaps Russian could stand up against the US but I don't think US are outright forcing trade agreements at a gun point, or am I wrong?
The United States has a variety of techniques for making sure its business interests get what they want. Aircraft carriers are one (see Iraq, and possibly Iran if things go south), CIA-sponsored coups another (Guatemala, El Salvador), economic sanctions a third (Iran again, Russia, much of Latin America). Negotiation at gun point often takes the form of crippling sanctions until and unless a US-friendly regime is in…
If you want to read a serious progressive economist, go for Dani Rodrik. Or hell, read Marx. Marx was a real social scientist. Chomsky, no.
It's always great to see an extremely intelligent person try to rationalize a core belief that's at direct odds with the cold, hard, and unforgiving reality they live in. The amount of mental gymnastics done here are Olympian, and this guy deserves a gold medal. However, even the fanciest mental tricks are never going to change the fundamental laws of reality. In the entire article he dances around second order effec…
On the other hand, top marginal tax rates are a fraction of what they were at their peak last century. We could double tax revenue at the drop of a hat, paying down our debt and ameliorating toxic wealth inequality simultaneously.
If we want to increase tax revenue to fund our current and future liabilities, the money is almost certainly going to have to come from tax increases on the middle class (who don't pay meaningful amounts of federal income tax for the most part) in the form of a VAT, as almost every other developed nation has already determined.
[0] https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/